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Wednesday, September 6, 2017

"A Burning in the Darkness" by A. P. McGrath

GUEST POST and GIVEAWAY

A Burning in the Darkness

by A. P. McGrath

Author A. P. McGrath joins us today to share a guest post and an excerpt from his debut novel, A Burning in Darkness. You can also enter our exclusive giveaway for a chance to win a $10 Amazon gift card.

Description

A compelling crime drama and poignant love story about a devoted man who must confront the painful legacy of his war torn childhood when he is wrongfully accused of murder. Michael Kieh's struggle to prove his innocence leads him on a charged journey that pitches the pursuit of justice and the search for love against the instinct for revenge.

Michael is the chief suspect in a murder at one of the world’s busiest airports where he is a full-time faith representative. A series of brief encounters with a soul mate has eased his loneliness and together they come close to uncovering a past major crime, but ultimately he chooses to protect a young witness who could prove his innocence. When he was a child, Michael witnessed appalling abuses of power, including the killing of a missionary priest who refused to betray young Michael. But there was a first love that he left behind in the brutal confusion of war. When she and Michael cross paths once more, they battle to prove his innocence in a foreign, hostile country. Can they solve the mystery before it is too late?

Excerpt

London

Young Foday Jenkins spied a curious sign at the far end of the concourse. The seven-year-old weaved his way through the hurrying travellers with their trolley-loads of suitcases. There were airline pilots and cabin crew walking briskly towards their international flights and armed police strolling like fortress watch guards. A rainbow glistened in the eastern sky beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass walls, watched in wonder by the frustrated passengers whose flights had been delayed by the ferocious summer storm. A charcoal wash of lightning-filled rain clouds shrouded the distant city outline.

Foday arrived at the sign. It was a matchstick man or woman kneeling, praying. Beneath it there was an entrance of two heavily frosted glass doors. He pushed them open and stepped inside. When the doors closed behind him there was a nice silence. He was in a room, maybe twice the size of his classroom, but it seemed so much bigger because there were sacred symbols from all over the world and holy words on the walls and little statues, and it wasn’t brightly lit in here like outside, yet it wasn’t so dim that it was scary. The duskiness made you look. There was a lovely smell in the air, the scent of a faraway country.

There was a row of electric burning candles that could be switched on for a handful of coins. There were six happy photographs of teenagers from all over the world tacked to the wall above the electric candles. One of the happy faces looked like his older sister Ameyo. She smiled that way. Uh-me-yo. This is how Mummy said it. There were handwritten notes stuck around the photographs with words like Please remember. Foday wondered if the person who wrote one of them had been crying because the ink was smudged.

On a cloth-covered table there was a visitor’s book. Foday wrote his name and address: Foday, 19 Bletchley Avenue, London NW22, UK, Europe, The World. He added I really like this place.

Over on the other side of the church, tucked around a corner, there was a wooden playhouse. A sign outside the door read: If you want a priest to hear your confession, press the button.

Foday turned nervously when he heard the loud sounds of the bustling concourse as the church doors opened. He could see a silhouetted figure against the gleaming frosted glass. The figure focused into a heavy man walking down between the seats. He stopped, agitated and sweating.

‘Are you lost?’ the man asked.

Foday knew he shouldn’t talk to strangers.

‘Where’s your mummy or daddy? Are they with the priest? Are you alone?’ he asked crossly.

Foday pressed the button requesting a priest to take confession.

[Want more? Click below to read a longer excerpt.]

Praise for the Book

"... I think this book is amazing. It is not too long to be draggy and it is not too short to feel that the story is being rushed. It is just perfect and the resolution part just wraps every loose end." ~ Mimi Jazman

"A Burning in the Darkness is an intense and unusual story involving a Catholic Priest who vacillates between being God’s disciple and being a normal man with sexual and emotional needs." ~ Amazon Customer

"I loved the story arc of this book. Each time I thought I had it figured out there was another twist and it turned in another direction. It had everything you could want in a great mystery/suspense novel." ~ Martha Speller

"A Burning in the Darkness by AP McGrath gets high marks from this avid reader! [...] This was one that I couldn't put down." ~ Pam

"A Burning in The Darkness is far more than the telling of a convoluted, connected murder mystery with the unusual protagonist being a priest whose parish is a large London airport and its travelers. All of the elements of a strong and gripping murder mystery are there and hold the reader's attention easily and intently." ~ Kindle Customer

Guest Post by the Author

A Sense of Place

The small town in south Tipperary in Ireland where I grew up had a population of 5,000 and when I was a teenager I began taking black and white photographs of local people in the places where they worked and lived. My mum knew the editor of the local newspaper - everybody knows everybody in a town that small. He liked the pictures I was taking and offered a weekly slot entitled "The Town and Its People". I would approach shop owners, butchers, pub owners etc. and ask them if I could drop by someday soon to take their picture. I realised they would dress up a little and strike a certain pose, but people reveal themselves through these self-conscious acts as much as they do when they are caught unawares. These folk had a certain pride in their living or work places and I wanted to capture these spaces as much as the people themselves. I was interested in the details of the old shops that were giving way to the more modern out-of-town shopping. I liked the light and the tonality and the resonances of past times. The weekly portraits were a hit with the townsfolk. Indeed on more than one occasion I remember my mum remarking to me "Oh, I hear Mrs O’Reilly is disappointed you haven’t taken her photograph." The townsfolk wanted themselves seen in and certain light and, in truth, I probably had my own slightly selfish reasons for taking the photographs. I knew that I wanted to leave and I was developing a skill that might get me a ticket out.

Probably all of the world’s biggest airports have a quiet prayer room offering sanctuary before a journey. A traveller might be embarking on a whole new life in a new country. Maybe he or she has planned an escape from an anxious past or is simply going on a welcome family holiday in the sun. Travel can also be a dreary necessity. We may need to make a business trip or a journey because of events that are beyond our control, as in the death of a family member or loved one. One friend told me she was about to go on a business trip when she miscarried her second pregnancy. She was in her mid to late forties and knew it was probably her last chance to give her young son a brother or sister. She entered the quietness of the prayer room and had a think and a good cry before she carried on with her journey. The prayer room had been a welcome and necessary shelter.

In a novel, place is inseparable from character and events. Indeed it can become an effective character in itself, a protagonist or an antagonist, soaked in mood. My novel A Burning in the Darkness begins in the prayer room of one of the world’s biggest airports. There is a tiny confessional box and in its anonymous darkness a voice confesses a murder to Father Michael Kieh, but a young boy has witnessed the killer go into the confessional. Father Michael becomes the main suspect in the murder investigation because of a group of pitiless antagonists, but he doesn’t betray the identity of the young boy nor break the Seal of Confession.

A large airport is a cinematic place. It is a frenzied cathedral dedicated to travel. It is also a lonely place. Michael is one of a number of faith representatives tending to the needs of more than 80 million passengers who pass through its gates each year, yet he rarely gets to see members of his flock more than once. His environment is constantly changing and he begins to question his faith. He is drawn to the companionship of an art dealer, Joan, who frequents the airport for business trips.

Michael grew up in Liberia in the midst of its brutal civil war. His childhood experiences shaped him and made him what he is: a good man. I wanted to explore the idea that he had the freedom to think differently from his environment. He had the ability to strike out against its dominant mood because he wanted the world to be good and not characterised by the destructive madness of war. And he had the strength of character to do it.

I studied English and Philosophy at University College Dublin, but I also trained and studied as a photographer. In the late eighties I had the opportunity to go to the tiny Caribbean island of Montserrat and used my time there to take portraits of some of its people. Some months ago, after I’d finished writing the novel, I was doing a clean-out of the attic and came across the photographs which had been hidden away for many years. I was struck by the way they explore the intertwined relationship between character and environment. In technical terms the portraits are taken with a wide-angle lens so that you see both the person and the surroundings. I was drawn to the looming Soufrière Hills volcano at the centre of the island and it becomes the backdrop to many of the photographs. However, in July 1995, the volcano erupted and destroyed most of the main habitable areas, including the principal town, the airport, and docking facilities. Two thirds of the population were forced to leave, mainly to the UK.

Most of the photographs were taken in parts of the island ravaged by the volcano. This area was designated an exclusion zone and it covers more than half of the island. So, there is poignancy to these photographs that capture a world now lost.

Several months before the publication of my novel I realised I had to set up a web site. I’m not a corporate person. I couldn’t see myself in a smiling brochure portrait, passing myself off as a kind of salesperson. But I could see that the photographs of Montserrat might say as much about me as they do about the people in the photographs. The quality of the relationship between the subject and the artist is crucial. The degree of imaginative sympathy for the subject is something that sets a good work of art apart from others. The ultimate skill is not in mastering the camera or a fancy ability with words; it is getting the subjects to reveal themselves – even if the subject is entirely your invention.

A. P. McGrath was born and grew up in Ireland. He now lives in London and works in TV. He is a single father with three beautiful children. He studied English and Philosophy and then post-graduate Film Studies.

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